Government has been accused of "acting secretly and in bad faith" by not allowing MPs to consider rules on parental responsibility before the November 14 education debate.

The accusation was levelled by Shadow Minister of Education Neville Darrell.

"By subverting free and open discussion on the rules governing parents' responsibilities to schools, the Government in our view demonstrated disregard for the larger public interest matters," he told The Royal Gazette.

The United Bermuda Party MP said the rules were laid out in the Code of Conduct, which was published in 2002 and recently revised to take into account views of teachers in the public school system.

The code should have been tabled in Parliament before the debate on planned changes to the Education Act, he added.

The proposed amendments to the Act would allow Education Minister Paula Cox to make parents more responsible if their children get out of line. Additionally, the Act would penalise a parent for a breach of those rules.

Mr. Darrell said the statement read by Ms Cox on November 14 stated that the rules would be taken from the Code of Conduct.

"In the absence of the specific rules to which to refer during the debate, the debate in the House in essence was abstract and somewhat conceptual," said Mr. Darrell.

He added: "We support the notion that all parents must take an active role in participating in their children's education, however, we feel that Government had acted secretly and in bad faith in not allowing the amended Code of Conduct to be released to the House prior to the debate of the Bill in the House.

"In fact, immediately after the Bill passed in the House, the Ministry of Education released, on the floor of the House, copies of the amended Code of Conduct to members of the House, including to the Shadow Minister of Education, from which the rules for parental responsibility were taken.

"In my opinion, the Government sent a clear signal that it did not want to debate the rules themselves in the House of Parliament, and clearly they wanted the debate to focus solely on the procedure for redress and prosecution for any parent who breaches any of the rules contained in the Code of Conduct."

Mr. Darrell said the UBP expressed concerns that the rules would have an adverse impact on single-parent families, which were mostly headed by females.

"While we supported that all parents must take an active interest in the education of the children, we expressed the view that adequate support must be placed around high-risk families to enable them to effectively operate in order to fulfil the obligations placed on them."

Ms Cox is off the Island and unavailable for comment.